onies; but I do not
see how a disposition of members, and the figure of a body without a soul,
can occasion harmony; he had better, learned as he is, leave these
speculations to his master Aristotle, and follow his own trade, as a
musician; good advice is given him in that Greek proverb,--

Apply your talents where you best are skill'd.

I will have nothing at all to do with that fortuitous concourse of
individual light and round bodies, notwithstanding Democritus insists on
their being warm, and having breath, that is to say, life. But this soul,
which is compounded of either of the four principles from which we assert
that all things are derived, is of inflamed air, as seems particularly to
have been the opinion of Panaetius, and must necessarily mount upwards; for
air and fire have no tendency downwards, but always ascend; so should they
be dissipated, that must be at some distance from the earth; but should
they remain, and preserve their original state, it is clearer still that
they must be carried heavenward; and this gross and concrete air, which is
nearest the earth, must be divided and broken by them; for the soul is
warmer, or rather hotter than that air, which I just now called gross and
concrete; and this may be made evident from this consideration,--that our
bodies, being compounded of the earthy class of principles, grow warm by
the heat of the soul.

XIX. We may add, that the soul can the more easily escape from this air,
which I have often named, and break through it; because nothing is swifter
than the soul; no swiftness is comparable to the swiftness of the soul;
which, should it remain uncorrupt and without alteration, must necessarily
be carried on with such velocity as to penetrate and divide all this
atmosphere, where clouds, and rain, and winds are formed; which, in
consequence of the exhalations from the earth, is moist and dark; but,
when the soul has once got above this region, and falls in with, and
recognises a nature like its own, it then rests upon fires composed of a
combination of thin air and a moderate solar heat, and does not aim at any
higher flight. For then, after it has attained a lightness and heat
resembling its own, it moves no more, but remains steady, being balanced,
as it were, between two equal weights. That, then, is its natural seat
where it has penetrated to something like itself; and where, wanting
nothing further, it may be supported and maintained by the same